


The Lion and the Wolf

by InkInc



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: A Scandal In Belgravia, Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-13
Updated: 2016-11-13
Packaged: 2018-08-30 20:45:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8548522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InkInc/pseuds/InkInc
Summary: Sherlock left Mycroft's study caring very little if Irene Adler lived or died... but a lot can change in 3 months.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, all! 
> 
> I'm so excited to be jumping back on the Adlock horse, and I hope that you'll enjoy my newest foray in to the world of Sherlock and Irene.
> 
> I should note that the tone of this story is going to be relatively dark. It picks up almost right after the climactic scene of ASiB, and follows Sherlock through the next couple of months up until the rescue scene at the end of that episode.
> 
> Thanks for reading!

**PROLOGUE**  


 

Please. She’d said please.

Sherlock closed his eyes for a moment at the sharp tightening in his chest. 

He had wanted her to beg, and he’d wanted her to be afraid. During those few moments standing in his brother’s study, staring in to The Woman’s eyes and her tear streaked face as she said the word _please_ … He’d hated her. Real, burning hatred such that was immediately and mercilessly horrifying to him in its intensity. He’d felt passion before – he’d felt anger, he’d felt want, and burn, and _need_ – he’d felt _all_ of these things before, and had always believed firmly that they were integral in aiding with his work. These feelings were instinct. But hatred? Hatred was the loss of control of emotion – being pushed to a point where you could no longer calmly, cooly, _rationally_ appraise a subject or situation. Hatred blinded. Hatred was a fog that settled over the clarity of the mind.  
  
Hatred was not an advantage.

He’d beaten her, but he’d lost to her, too, and now that their game of push and pull was over… no one had won.

He took a sip from his glass as he stared at nothing in particular from his usual seat in the usual room in the usual flat. Everything was usual. Everything was as it always had been, and yet… something wasn’t. Something was gone. Something was missing. There was an emptiness in the air that hadn’t been there before, or if it had, Sherlock had never noticed it. Which was odd in itself, wasn’t it? That there could be such a significant hole in his awareness. Because, surely, this emptiness hadn’t just come out of nowhere. No, it had to have been there all along, and somehow he was only just noticing it now.

An emptiness that must have been so apart of him or of his surroundings that it had never made itself known until something came along to fill it for a short while… Like white noise from a machine that cycles on and off filling the silence of a room for just long enough to make a person forget that they’re hearing it. It isn’t until the noise is gone again that the person remembers what the silence really sounds like – _recognizes_ what the silence really is.  
  
“She was working with Moriarty.” Sherlock answered John’s question, and then shifted his eyes to his friend who stood in the doorway.

John crossed his arms, then let out a breath of air almost as a stop gap for words he didn’t seem to have right away.

“… Right.” He responded, then gestured with a small upward jerk of his arms toward the glass in Sherlock’s hand. “You’re taking it well, then?”

Sherlock broke eye contact with an abrupt cock of his head, and scoffed a short mirthless laugh.

“Know when you’ve been beaten.” he said ironically.

John stepped in to the room and walked almost carefully to his own usual chair.  
  
“What’s going to happen to her now?” He asked after a few moments’ silence.  
  
Sherlock shrugged lightly with a downturn of his mouth.  
  
“Knowing Mycroft, nothing pleasant.” he paused as though that were the end of his answer, but then took a sharp intake of breath, and looked John in the face. “He can’t put her to trial, because that would mean the inevitable reveal of years of a government plot and cover-up, and the fact that it was all unveiled and unraveled by a woman with a camera phone.”  
  
John sat back heavily in his seat, taking that information in.

“Will he-- I mean, _can_ he--”

“Make her ‘disappear’?” here, Sherlock shrugged again. “My brother and I are similar in that we can do things that ordinary men can’t do as a means to an end. Is my brother a murderer? No. But he _is_ a pragmatist of a breed that people like The Woman learn cautionary tales about… But I doubt he’ll kill her. He’ll interrogate her until she’s made herself the enemy of every criminal in the Western World, and then he’ll let her go.”  
  
“Let her go?”

“In a manner of speaking.” Sherlock responded, taking another sip from his glass and wincing only slightly at the burn of the scotch as it traveled down his throat.

“And what manner is that?”

Sherlock set his glass down impatiently.

“When I say ‘enemy’,” he started as he sliced his hand through the air in a short jerky motion to punctuate his words. “What exactly do you think I mean? I know you drift through a world where an enemy is nothing more than a school yard rival, but that world is a _fairytale_.”

John cleared his throat.  
  
“Yeah,” he responded, nodding his head. “You’re right. I’m sure I was shot in the shoulder by someone I’d managed to cross in primary school.”

Sherlock could do nothing but concede the point, so he didn’t respond to the comment. Running his hand through his hair, he shook his head.  
  
“He won’t kill her; it’s not his style. Mycroft knows the same as I do, the same as _The Woman_ does, that the worst he could do to her is set her free. Because her enemies aren’t school yard rivals, and they aren’t soldiers. They’re men like Moriarty who will skin people alive just for getting in their _way_.”

There was a punctuated silence.

“And what kind of woman is Irene Adler?”

Sherlock rotated his jaw and angled his head down and to the side a bit.

“Ordinary.” he said almost angrily.  
  
“Ordinary?”  
  
“Yes, _ordinary_.” Sherlock looked at John. “I’d overestimated her cleverness for months, obsessing over the password to her camera phone, when if I’d just seen what was right in front of me--”  
  
“You did see.” John interrupted with that infuriating expression that seemed to look right through him.  
  
Sherlock furrowed his forehead.  
  
“I-- Excuse me?”  
  
“You saw.” John pointed at him almost accusingly. “You saw what she wanted you to see. The fact of the matter is that she _is_ clever – clever enough to fool you, at least for a while, and that’s why you’re so angry. You’re not angry at her, you’re angry at yourself for breaking one of your own rules.”  
  
“And what rule is that?”  
  
John paused pointedly.  
  
“Seeing without observing.”  
  
Sherlock raised his head, his jaw stiffening.

“So how’d you crack it in the end, Sherlock?” John continued. “This mysterious code of hers, how’d you finally figure it out?”

“Cracks in the veneer.” He said simply, monotonously.

“So you beat her at her own game and came straight home for the whole sulk and brood routine?” John shook his head. “I don’t know what her passcode was, and I don’t know what the hell happened tonight, but I know that _this_ \--” he gestured widely at his friend. “--Is about more than not knowing she was working with Moriarty, which, by the way, is the most unsettling bit about this whole thing. There’s a psychopath out there recruiting other psychopaths, and yet you’re more concerned about the fact that you got lied to.”  
  
“Lied to?” Sherlock hissed, his face crumpling in an insulted grimace. “You think I care about being lied to? People lie, John. It’s being able to see _through_ the lie that sets me above people like you.”

John laughed shortly, and stared at Sherlock with an almost dumbfounded smile on his face for a moment or so before shaking his head and standing. He turned to walk away, but stopped short upon reaching the kitchen, and turned back around.

“Or maybe you’re just upset about what distracted you from seeing through her lie.” he said sharply.  
  
Sherlock narrowed his eyes, but there must have been a more marked shift in his expression, because John nodded almost triumphantly.  
  
“Speaking as someone who doesn’t want to have to sift through your sock drawer every day for the next few months, I’d suggest dealing with this instead of pretending you’re too far ‘above’ it to bother.” He turned to go again, but turned back momentarily one final time. “Oh, and by the way, that _is_ my medical opinion.”  
  
John turned and was gone.

Sherlock closed his eyes and took a deep steadying breath.

_Please._

He could hear her voice in his head.

_Please. You’re right. I won’t even last 6 months._

Sherlock opened his eyes, and the hatred he’d felt in his brother’s study swelled once again in his lungs and the sting burned bright once again behind his eyes.

Suddenly his phone rang. He creased his forehead, and took it from his pocket. It was Mycroft.

He accepted the call and put the phone to his ear.

“Mycroft.” was all he said.

“Arrangements have been made to escort Miss Adler out of England tonight.” came his brother’s somber voice from the other end of the line.  
  
“You’re having her escorted? How kind of you.”

“It’s as you said. If kindness was my motivator, I’d have locked her up.”

“And what would you call this?”  
  
A beat.  
  
“Assurance.”  
  
Sherlock swallowed.  
  
“Is that why you’re calling, Big Brother? To... _assure_ me?”  
  
“I thought you’d be interested to know, yes, but… there is one other thing.” he paused. “She’s requesting to speak to you.”  
  
Sherlock hardened his jaw.  
  
“I’ve said everything I had to say to her.”  
  
“I expressed to her that that would likely be the case, but she is being quite… insistent.”

Sherlock spread the fingers of his free hand against the arm rest of his chair, and there was silence between him and his brother for a few seconds.

“Far be it for me to deny the last request of a dying woman.” he finally said, his voice low and venomous.  
  
Mycroft didn’t respond, but Sherlock could swear he could _hear_ the surprise register on his brother’s face before there was an audible shuffle of air and hands.

“Sherlock...”

It was her. Unceremonious and sudden, her voice was in his ear, and his heart began to race. With one word, he could tell that she’d regained her cool composure, and he had no idea what she could possibly have to say to him now.  
  
For his part, he said nothing.  
  
“In 3 or 4 months, your brother will be at your door with a file with my name on it to tell you that I’m dead.” The Woman continued blithely, and Sherlock ignored the pinching pain in his ribcage. “But knowing that it will haunt you for the rest of your life will put a smile on my face every day for the rest of mine.”  
  
Sherlock’s breath caught, and he swallowed.

He hung up.

**...**


End file.
